A Fraught Fortnight

Crypto has enjoyed an uncharacteristically bullish few days as the situation in the Middle East has stabilised (for now) and optimism has started to creep back into the markets. Let’s hope it can last. Today’s forward guidance weighs up the case for this rally continuing into next week.

Elsewhere and the hyper financialisation of… well, everything, is continuing to gather steam, driven by the two most anxious generations in recent history. We look at how younger people are ‘investing’ their money these days and dig into the catalysts that have caused them to abandon the more tried and tested ways of building wealth.

☔ Dump & Dumper ☔

Crypto doesn’t have its own set of commandments, but if it did then one would probably read: ‘and VCs shalt dump on retail.’It’s been a constant and depressing feature of the industry over the past few years and understanding the mechanics of it is vital if you want to survive out there in the crypto jungle.

In today’s video, we break down all the ways this extraction plays out and look at the techniques some of the most unscrupulous actors employ. It’s not all doom and gloom though, as we also look at some of the pushback against this status quo and consider how extractive VCs might one day be consigned to the dustbin of history where they belong.

You can watch that video here.

📈 Crypto Market Forecast 📈

The ceasefire is holding; the question is for how long. Bitcoin reclaimed $78,000 yesterday after Iran declared the Strait of Hormuz "completely open" for commercial vessels, triggering the most aggressive relief rally in risk assets since the March lows. The S&P 500 has now added over $7.3 trillion since 30th March in its fastest recovery since 1982.

This puts crypto in a peculiar position. On one hand, the macro tailwinds are finally cooperating: the Lebanon-Israel ceasefire is in effect, US-Iran talks have made "progress" according to vice president Vance, and oil prices have collapsed from $145 to below $100 as physical market differentials begin to normalise. On the other hand, the underlying tension has not been resolved. The ceasefire expires on 22nd April. Iran still maintains effective control over Hormuz passage, having demonstrated it can charge crypto tolls on tankers at will. Gulf and European officials privately believe a full peace deal could take six months to materialise.

As noted in last week's newsletter, the markets and the global economy have been the weakest participants in this conflict. The IEA warned that Europe has just six weeks of jet fuel remaining if disruptions persist. Germany has already cut fuel duties to cushion the blow to consumers. These are not the actions of governments expecting a swift resolution.

And yet, markets are pricing in optimism. Capital flows into BTC just flipped positive for the first time since January, with liquidity returning as derivatives recover from the carnage of early April. Funding rates hit their most negative levels since 2023 earlier this week, historically a reliable contrarian signal. The short squeeze thesis played out almost exactly: over $430 million in shorts got liquidated on the initial ceasefire announcement, with BTC accounting for $245 million of that figure.

Institutional positioning adds another layer of intrigue. Morgan Stanley's Bitcoin ETF pulled in over $100 million in its first week. Goldman Sachs has filed for a Bitcoin Premium Income ETF. Spot Bitcoin ETFs have seen strong consecutive inflows returning to the market. Strategy continues its accumulation, with Michael Saylor hinting at further purchases. Saylor is now break-even on his entire position.

There is, however, a dissonance between price action and on-chain behaviour. Spot demand remains in a clear downtrend even as price makes higher highs. The Coinbase premium is threatening to flip negative, which has historically signalled distribution rather than accumulation. Large sell orders have stacked up between $78,000 and $80,000, with thin buy support until $73,000. This is not the structure of a sustained breakout; it is the structure of a relief rally into resistance.

The regulatory picture offers some counterbalance. JPMorgan reports that the Clarity Act is nearing completion, though stablecoin yield provisions have been pushed back following pressure from banks. Treasury secretary Bessent has urged lawmakers to pass crypto market structure legislation before the August recess. Pakistan has reversed its crypto ban, allowing banks to serve licensed firms.

The macro overlay is where conviction becomes difficult. Private credit stress continues to spread. Payment in kind (PIK) arrangements are proliferating as borrowers cannot make interest payments and lenders refuse to recognise defaults. This is precisely the kind of late-cycle rot that tends to surface as liquidity tightens. Energy uncertainty has already caused Germany to cut its 2026 GDP forecast.

Gold meanwhile continues its silent repricing. Central bank holdings now exceed valuation-adjusted US dollar reserve assets for the first time on record. Gold is trading near $4,870 per ounce, up over 40% year-on-year, while Brent crude has pulled back to around $95.

So where does this leave Bitcoin? The technical picture suggests one more leg higher is possible. A break above $76,000 could push BTC toward the $78,000 to $80,000 zone, where the weekly bull market support band acts as resistance. But this remains a bear market rally until proven otherwise.

🎲 The Hypergamblification Era 🎲

We’ve officially entered the age of hyper-speculation. Somewhere between the FanDuel push notification and the Pump.fun launch screen, an entire generation has quietly decided that saving is a losing strategy.

Over the past few years, it’s become increasingly clear that most Gen Z and millennials view speculation as a key strategy for financial progress, with focus on income and career growth dimming by the day.

Whether it’s stocks, memecoins, prediction markets, Labubus, or Pokémon cards - it’s easier to find people dabbling in at least one form of financial speculation than otherwise. In recent years, the percentage of this population wandering further out along the risk curve has been growing at an accelerated pace.

The best evidence for this claim lies in the financial trends of these businesses. For context, Americans legally wagered $166.94 billion on sports bets in 2025, an 11% increase on the previous year and an all-time record per the American Gaming Association. This generated $16.96 billion in operator revenue and was driven by 22% annual growth in online sports betting, with more than 80% of that flow placed from a phone.

In 2025, the Kalshi-Polymarket prediction-market duopoly generated more than $44 billion in trading volume. Recent stats show this accelerating - both platforms combined for $17.9 billion in volume in February 2026 alone. This puts the category on a run-rate of more than $200 billion in 2026 - a possible 4x from 2025.

Zero-day-to-expiry options now account for 59% of all S&P 500 volume per Cboe's full-year 2025 data, with retail responsible for half or more of that flow. Pump.fun alone has cleared more than $800 million in lifetime revenue launching tokens on Solana, fewer than 2% of which ever graduate to a major venue.

Interestingly however, the key driver behind this trend isn’t greed but anxiety.

Somehow, Gen Z and Millennials have managed to become the most financially anxious generations in recent history. Deloitte's 2025 Gen Z and Millennial Survey of more than 23,000 respondents across 44 countries found that the share of Gen Zs who do not feel financially secure jumped from 30% to 48% in a single year. Likewise, Millennials moved from 32% to 46%. More than half of each cohort say they live paycheque to paycheque, and more than 80% cite their long-term financial future as a primary source of stress.

The American Psychological Association's Stress in America research also reaches a similar conclusion from a different angle: 82% of 18-to-34-year-olds cite money as a significant stressor, the highest rate of any age cohort. That said, it’s important to stress that this isn’t an ‘America-only’ phenomenon. Even Australia's securities regulator reports that Gen Z is the most financially worried cohort in the country.

If you’re wondering why – the short answer is that it’s a direct consequence of living through a ‘K-shaped’ economy.

To refresh your memory, a K-shaped economy is when different parts of the economy move in opposite directions at the same time following a recession or downturn. Those on the upper arm of the K experience an increase in wealth due to rising asset values and/or incomes, while those on the lower arm face increasing financial strain due to declining purchasing power alongside stagnating or decreasing wages.

The post-2008 and post-COVID periods have been textbook K-shaped environments. Central bank policy inflated asset prices dramatically, which rewarded existing owners and punished aspiring ones. Recent advancements in AI technology have also streamlined productivity in most industries – leading to fewer jobs on the market. In effect, the inequality between asset owners (primarily Baby Boomers) and non-asset owners (primarily Gen Z and Millennials) has progressed rapidly.

Housing affordability, in particular, has deteriorated so dramatically in most major economies that homeownership feels less like a milestone and more like a fantasy. Only 26.1% of Gen Z-ers and 54.9% of Millennials owned a home in 2024. In other words, the average Millennial or Gen Z is stuck at a stage where their basic needs are easily met but they have no meaningful way to progress further up the economic ladder.

Both cohorts are desperate for a jump ahead in life – leading to a society where hyper-gambling is more popular than ever. According to Northwestern Mutual's 2026 Planning and Progress Study, 80% of Gen Zs and 75% of Millennials who feel behind believe that high-risk speculative investments will help them hit their goals faster than saving through conventional channels.

Mainstream media now calls this "financial nihilism." Perhaps more intriguing is that participants are well aware of the low odds of winning on these platforms, yet they persist. So, is this a classic case of desperation leading to recklessness?

Well, the World Economic Forum reframes it as an institutional-trust collapse rather than pure risk-seeking: if the legacy system is perceived as rigged, then decentralised and speculative venues look comparatively legitimate. In a perverse way, the housing crisis has created a generation of involuntary alternative asset investors.

Two markets in particular are absorbing this flow in ways we think are material. The first is collectibles. Walmart's trading card sales rose 200% between February 2024 and June 2025, with Pokémon card sales up more than tenfold year-on-year. Similarly, Target's trading card sales were on pace to exceed $1 billion in 2025. Pop Mart's Monsters line, which includes Labubu, did about $677 million in revenue in the first half of 2025 alone, a 668% year-on-year jump, with North American sales up more than 1,100%.

That said, not every corner of the collectibles market is melting up. Secondary watch prices bottomed at a three-year low in 2024. StockX also reported only 47% of 2024 sneaker releases traded above retail, down from 58% in 2020, with per-pair margins compressing from around 100% to between 10 and 25%. In other words, the speculation reflex of the hypergamblification era is a set of flows that rotates between categories as narratives live and die. That is an important distinction for anyone modelling the sustainability of the current trading card run.

We’ve already seen this playout in crypto - the second market benefitting from financial nihilism. Unlike previous market cycles, its most recent one was marked by rotating rallies between altcoin categories instead of a uniform ‘altseason’ so to speak. Currently, we’re in a phase where crypto projects most aligned with institutional interest and potential TradFi integration are the market’s champions. The main highlights here are revenue generating products and perp DEX platforms.

Notably, perpetual futures DEXs cleared more than $12 trillion in cumulative trading volume in 2025. Among them, Hyperliquid commanded as much as 70% market share at its peak before rivals like Aster and Lighter chipped away. In recent months, Hyperliquid has seen a slow and steady climb back in dominance as HIP-3 offers proxy exposure to a 24/7 equities market. Just last month, we saw the S&P Dow Jones Indices license the S&P 500 to trade as a perpetual contract on Hyperliquid. The index that built a generation of passive investors is now leveraged, 24/7, onchain.

Prediction markets are the second major winner. Kalshi and Polymarket are reportedly raising rounds at valuations of roughly $20 billion a piece (a doubling in three months on both sides) while Jump Trading and ICE have taken stakes in both leaders. Paradigm is also building trading terminals for prediction market professionals.

Common between both categories is their focus on hyper speculation. In our view, this reflects financial nihilism now being recognised as a persistent theme for the foreseeable future. While narratives may rotate, the easiest assets to hold over the decade are those enabling the trading and speculation on these narratives. It might be smart to keep this in mind as you pick long-term holds to bet on during the crypto bear market.

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🔮 Video Pipeline 🔮

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📖 Quote of the Week 📖

“The intelligent investor is a realist who sells to optimists and buys from pessimists” - Benjamin Graham

Team Coin Bureau

Disclosure: Authors may own cryptoassets named in this newsletter. These are unqualified opinions, and a Coin Bureau newsletter, is meant for informational purposes only. It is not meant to serve as investment advice. Please consult with your investment, tax, or legal advisor.